... South of the border (occasional snippets from) Nick Must Is Boris Johnson the new George Brown? The position of Foreign Secretary has occasionally been used by Prime Ministers to put trouble-makers in a position of power that keeps them away from home as much as possible. (Remember the Blair cabinet and Robin Cook?) As the Foreign Secretary of Harold Wilson's first cabinet, George Brown was famous for regularly being the worse for wear following a liquid lunch. Indeed, a biography of Brown is titled Tired and Emotional1 in tribute to the phrase that Private Eye derived from his frequently inebriated state. He is almost equally famous for attending a diplomatic reception in Peru, ...

... Miles was a seminal figure in the UK counter culture of the '60s, present at all of the major events. It is hard not to think that the yawning gap in electoral participation by the young (so noticeable post-1997) was due to a combination of youth culture drifting into slick consumerism and political leaders – like Blair and Brown – not being prepared to do very much, unless they have the agreement of (perpetually) undecided voters. Despite repeated electoral endorsements, the Labour years continued with the Thatcher settlement: no investment in housing, huge debt levels for those wanting to go to university, lower than average investment in health care, poor unemployment benefits and ...

... : historic breaks with the past in which they can demonstrate their courageous leadership, while at the same time showing that they are in step with public opinion. For Blair's successor, that moment never came – even with the aid of focus groups, of whose outpourings he was once an avid consumer: 'After becoming leader, GB [Gordon Brown] continued to seek the voters' views at every turn, calling frequently and emailing most mornings to share new thinking for policy ideas, speech-lines or other initiatives. I had checked focus group reactions to his first Cabinet, to the government of all the talents concept, to his healthcare policy . . . and to his ...

... he knew only as 'Wallace' and paid in advance to fire his rifle at someone. That someone turned out to be Kennedy. The book centrally describes the authors' attempts to identify 'Wallace'. This was Malcolm 'Mac' Wallace, they discovered, one of LBJ's entourage. He was identified for them by LBJ's former mistress, Madeleine Brown, who lived in Dallas and had independently concluded that Wallace was involved in the dirty deed (although she had no evidence). There was one little detail in the Factor story which resonated with me. On Factor's account, after leaving the Texas Book Depository, he was dropped at the bus station to get a bus back to ...

... died in 1946. Sophie also suffered a nervous breakdown, which her Australian relatives attributed to the stress of bombing during the War. However Mabel Singleton, with whom Fullerton lived, believed was due instead to her husband's internment. Jenks then moved out his family house, and after several changes of address ended up lodging with Catherine and Esther Browning, the daughters of a clergyman, in Pangbourne, where he would remain until 1959. Jenks was in some kind of relationship with Esther Browning, and the two went away together in 1950 and 51. He was also in love with Sally Stuckey. His relationship with Esther broke down in 1956, and in November of that year ...

... performance in this unwinnable war? The reputation of British Army as counterinsurgency specialists has been permanently diminished by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What, though, of shortages of equipment and troops? While these were undoubtedly factors, they affected how the unwinnable war unfolded rather than having any direct effect on the inevitable outcome. The Blair and Brown governments deserve censure for getting involved at all, rather than for somehow losing the war. It is worth briefly noticing here the dramatic falling out between Gordon Brown and General Richard Dannatt over the resourcing of the war. Without wishing to be unfair to Dannatt, I suspect that he thought Brown's reluctance to finance the conflict derived from his ...

... The great charlatan My Life, Our Times Gordon Brown The Bodley Head, 2017, £25, h/b John Newsinger There were never any fundamental policy differences between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Both men accepted that the world was completely dominated by the super rich and that government in the modern world had to serve their interests: there was no alternative. Social democratic reformism was abandoned and neo-liberalism was enthusiastically embraced. Instead of rolling back the Thatcherite assault on the working class and the welfare state, they proceeded to consolidate it. This was what New Labour was all about. Certainly Brown made an original contribution to their partnership. It was he who ...

... .53 How can he believe that will wash? There was a blizzard of information about Iraq and its putative WMDs and there was no evidence for their existence. Even if the evidence was there it could not justify the invasion, half million deaths and the subsequent lethal pollution by depleted uranium. The late Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary while Brown was Chancellor, had access to the same information and resigned in opposition to the approaching war. He said in his resignation speech: 'Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort ...

... drift was actively encouraged after 1994 by Labour's new leader Tony Blair and his business-friendly, pro- 'aspiration' policy stance. Blair's May 1997 victory was widely expected, although its scale was probably not. Labour's majority in the House of Commons was larger than the entire Parliamentary Conservative Party. Defenders of Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown like to cite the introduction of the National Minimum Wage and to point to steady increases in public spending along with more generous welfare arrangements. The long lasting upswing in UK growth, which had originated back in the fourth quarter of 1991, was produced in evidence that Labour's 'third way' between full- blooded Thatcherism (however defined) ...